Chris Satchell says Xbox 360 with HDMI is just an experiment at the Microsoft HQ

Last week, pictures of a
prototype Xbox 360 with an HDMI connector and a new scaler chip surfaced on
the Web. Some took this as a sure sign that Microsoft was surely tooling a new
version of its gaming console with updated features and improved technology,
perhaps in response to both consumer demands and pressure from competitors.

During an interview with GameSpot at CES, Chris Satchell,
general manager of the game developer group at Microsoft, addressed the rumors
of an HDMI-enabled Xbox 360. He starts by saying, “We're always working on
prototypes and new technologies and just playing with stuff in Redmond to see
what's interesting. I think at the moment we have the widest available
connections on the system. If you want to get great HD, I think we've got a
good solution for that.”

Satchell then sidesteps the question for a bit and talks
about the wide array of standards available to consumers and how Microsoft is
always keeping an eye on that. He then returns to the original question and
says, “At the moment, everything you might have seen is just looking at our
experimentation back in Redmond, not really a product that we're thinking about
announcing.”

With the Xbox Live Video
Marketplace and eventual addition Xbox 360 IPTV,
owners of Microsoft’s console will quickly find their 20GB hard drives without
adequate storage space in a hurry. Another one of the rumored upcoming upgrades
to the Xbox 360 is a bigger hard drive, which has been hintedat previously. Satchell
responds to the cries for a roomier drive with the following: “That's not
really something we're looking at today. We're very open to feedback on it. As
we produce these services, if we see an increase in pressure that's something
that will be interesting to look at, but there isn't any announcement today
about any new configuration that may or may not be happening.”

Satchell also mentions in the interview that Microsoft
currently has no plans to offer an IPTV product directly, instead opting to
allow its telco partners to set pricing and bundle options for the product’s
eventual rollout.